


sunshine staying home to watch the rain

by kekinkawaii



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, With A Twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25872754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kekinkawaii/pseuds/kekinkawaii
Summary: No timer, no soulmate. Like a candle snuffed out with two fingers. Just like that.(But Dean Winchester never did play by the rules.)
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 14
Kudos: 115





	sunshine staying home to watch the rain

Gregory Novak met his wife in a grocery store. They were both in the frozen foods aisle. He reached for the peas—she reached for them—their fingers brushed. Their eyes locked.

On their wrists, the consistently-ticking string of numbers reached zero.

Their friends laughed about it; meeting in the grocery store over peas, no less. Granted, there were many more, much more romantic first meetings. But they didn’t care (they had just met their soulmate—who would care?). They had peas for their anniversary.

When Castiel was born, he hated peas. He would screw up his cute button nose and wail with indignity, his tiny hands clutched into fists and waving in the air, his own timer—a long, lengthy script that curled almost all the way around his wrist—flashing in the light.

Castiel grew up constantly scrutinizing the small, black numbers on his skin, turning it this way and that. He grew up reading the local soulmate spotter column in the paper, matching the numbers listed with his own. He never did find it, but then again, in such a small town, it didn’t seem likely anyhow. He grew up watching people left and right glancing at other people’s wrists, with the occasional gasp and shriek as the timer slowly counted down to zero—together.

He grew up a romantic. He dreamt about his soulmate, pondered and turned it over in the late hours of the night. Would they be tall? Pretty? (And, when he turned seventeen and realized that not all of his male friends had active crushes on male celebrities and that he may not be as straight as he originally thought—handsome?) Maybe they’d meet in the grocery store, like his parents had. Maybe the local theatre. Maybe Castiel would be on an internship somewhere in NYC and run into them while chasing after a subway, stuttering apologies and shaky hands travelling to grab the other’s only to realize that his timer’s gone down right to zero.

When Castiel was twenty-two, he woke up one day and stumbled into the washroom, reached to undo his zip, when his fingers froze.

With the tip of his index finger, he brushed the inside of his left wrist. It was completely and utterly blank. It was as if nothing had ever been there, smooth and unmarred, a symmetry to his right.

Where the numbers had been, there was now only skin. Just—gone.

Just like that.

Castiel felt his heart give out a pitiful little stutter. He had only heard rumours, after all, whispered words and snatched glances—it was quite a personal topic, after all. Sensitive. Painful to speak about.

No timer, no soulmate. Like a candle snuffed out with two fingers. (Just like that.)

He sank down to the ground, clutching his wrist as if he could burn an imprint of the numbers if he’d only squeeze hard enough.

He started wearing a watch, tightly strapped to prevent slips. It felt constricting against his skin, as if it begged to be set free and feel the air upon it. Castiel kept it on.

After Castiel graduated, he opened a shop in the intersection between two busy streets. He sold many things; trinkets, really, but he specialized in making watches—more specifically, stopwatches. _Soul Watching,_ it was called. Turning a mark on your skin into something fashionable, something personalizable. It was an instant hit, and he bought a nice apartment a block away and earned enough money to give himself a decent car, a store expansion, a fancy meal every now and then.

But the wind against his face was sharp and stinging and his meals, no matter how highly priced, were bland. Castiel spent his early twenties staring at an empty seat across from him, feeling the watch around his wrist burn like it had been set aflame.

“Morning, Castiel,” Anna called out when she entered the shop.

“Morning,” Castiel replied with a smile. Anna was a frequent customer, bright and cheerful. He was already at the counter, polishing and rearranging the display so that all the watch fronts were facing the customer when they walked in. 

When Anna didn’t respond—instead, a thick, tension-filled silence filling the air—Castiel glanced up to see her smiling so widely it looked like it hurt. “What?” he asked.

Anna was very nearly vibrating. “Guess what happened this morning,” she said.

Castiel blinked. Anna raised up her left hand and flashed her inner wrist at him. A small black 0 winked back at him.

“His name is Jack,” Anna said. “He works at the bakery, the one down the street? I saw it when he was handing me my change. I think coconut buns are my favourite food now.”

Castiel was still staring at the 0 on her wrist, and he flitted his gaze to her shining eyes. “That’s fantastic news,” he said.

He’s had customers, employees, friends, ask about his wrist. Mostly a sideways inquiry, deliberately casual, easy to dodge but laced with innate curiosity. His watch was a normal watch, displaying the time and that was that. Castiel told the truth one time, and was met with so much pity that he never told the truth again. _I like to be surprised,_ he would now say instead, with a purposefully secret smile. _I don’t need it glaring up at me every time I move my hands._ That, at least, was the truth, if an omitted one.

“I’m happy for you, Anna,” he said, and it was genuine, if not honest.

Anna beamed. “Thanks,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it, honestly. I had almost forgotten about it. I nearly didn’t walk into that bakery—imagine that!”

“Well, it is fate, after all,” Castiel murmured. “Jack is your soulmate. You would’ve met him one way or another.” (Anyone with a timer would, after all.)

“I guess so,” Anna said dreamily. “But anyway, we’re having dinner tonight. I should introduce you two sometime, he’s got bright blue eyes, kind of like yours, but his hair is blond, and he’s got this adorable laugh…”

Castiel turned his attention back to the counter, nodding at the right times and chiming in when needed. His own watch’s ticking suddenly sounded very loud.

Castiel got home that night to find that his neighbour, Mr. Simmons, was moving out. 

“Got a new job in Sacramento,” he said gruffly while Castiel helped him move his boxes upon boxes of books and records out of the space. “Pay was too good to resist.”

Castiel nodded politely. He couldn’t remember what Mr. Simmons did, to be perfectly honest. Castiel was jokingly (though not completely inaccurately) referred to as the local hermit of the apartment because of his lack of willful interaction and participation in afternoon teas and evening barbeques. If he were to be perfectly honest, it was because he couldn’t stand listening to them gossip about the latest soulmates and guess about each other’s timers—all counting down, down, down with every second.

“I gotta get everything out by Friday,” Mr. Simmons explained when they stopped for a brief rest. “Someone else is moving in. Snatched up the place as soon as it was up.”

“Oh?” Castiel asked. He wasn’t surprised. Rent might have been crazy high recently, but the apartment was in a good spot, right in the middle of the city.

“Don’t know anything about him, if you’re looking for gossip,” Mr. Simmons warned. “Go to Stacy and Tracy for that. I’m pretty sure they’ll have his life story by this weekend.”

Castiel thought briefly that they would probably-definitely nag the new neighbour about his soulmate timer, and that he wanted to be part of none of it, and then he kicked the thought into the corner of his mind and promptly forgot about it in favour of wondering how cardboard boxes could be so utterly heavy.

On Friday, Castiel closed up shop early, like he always did. Fridays were always the busiest. He sold five soulwatches that day—each perfectly adjusted and tailored to match the numbers on the customer’s wrist down to the nearest millisecond. One of them had their number down to the next few hours, and she wouldn’t stop smiling about it, a rosy flush to her cheeks and an anticipating shine in her eyes. Castiel watched her go with a healthy dose of bittersweetness, like wormwood dipped in honey.

He walked into the elevator in his apartment and pressed the button for the seventh floor. Right when the doors were about to close, he heard the pitter-pattering of feet and an unfamiliar, rough voice rounding the corner—“Wait!” they cried out.

Inexplicably, Castiel’s heart stuttered. Jerkily, he jabbed the _Open Doors_ button, but it was too late, and he could only see a glimpse of black-and-grey plaid, just the slightest corner, before the view was cut short by the aluminum doors and he was left staring at his own reflection—hair mussed and face curiously flushed.

That night, Castiel heard a mishmash of sounds coming from the wall separating him and the previous room that belonged to Mr. Simmons. The new neighbour, he supposed.

First, there was the familiar pounding of feet—boots, he decided, imagining a thick pair of hiking boots, leaving heavy thuds echoing past the wall. Next, the slide of luggage across the floor. More luggage. A papery hiss of cardboard boxes, dragged. Another heavy thud—a muttered curse. 

After Castiel prepared and finished dinner, the new neighbour seemed to have settled down. He heard the clatter of pots and pans, and then music. Rock, hard and heavy, so loudly it came straight through the wall. Castiel recognized ADCD, Metallica, Zeppelin—the hits. It could be someone older, then? But why would they move into such a bustling, busy city?

Castiel wondered why he was putting so much thought into someone he would probably see twice a week, smile politely with a nod, and proceed to move on with each other’s lives until the next time they stumble into each other in the hallways or the apartment elevator. Maybe he was getting too lonely. It wouldn’t be surprising, but he thought (with a little cynicism) that he should get used to it. It had been years and years since that one morning, but sometimes, he still wondered about how things could’ve been different.

Some nights, when he’s had a bad day—angry customers and gloomy, rainy afternoons—he ran his thumb across the leather strap of his watch. Other nights, when he’s had both a bad day and some to drink, he would slip his fingers underneath the strap and stroke at the skin underneath. It was pale, now, a blank strip across his wrist like a glaring neon sign. 

When Castiel fell asleep that night, it was to the quiet humming in the room across from his, separated by a wall thin enough to bleed through the sounds of everyday life, so quietly it was nearly a lullaby.

Maybe it was because Castiel had been steadily falling into a slow, even routine. Maybe it was the boredom and stagnation finally getting to him. But he found himself sticking around in his apartment more often, lounging in the living room or sitting cross-legged on his bed, tapping away on his laptop or stirring absentmindedly at a pot of pasta—all as an excuse, really, to listen to the new next-door neighbour.

Slowly, over the next few days, he developed an image of him, an internal file of his routine. He had a fondness for mullet rock. He cursed often, under his breath. He’d speak, sometimes, maybe over the phone, too quietly to be overheard through the walls.

Castiel wondered what he did for a living. He wondered what he looked like. He wondered why he listened to so much loud music, and listened to it so loudly, too. 

He even got so curious as to approach Tracy about it.

“A new neighbour moved in recently, did he not?” he pressed—carefully casual.

Tracy’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah! This Friday. I was out that night, and so was Stacy—I can’t believe we didn’t catch him on his way moving in! You live right next to him, right? Do you know anything about him? Is he cute?”

“No,” Castiel said.

Tracy’s face fell. “He’s not cute?”

“No,” Castiel hastily corrected, “I meant, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him, either.”

Tracy’s face rose and fell again. “Oh.”

“He listens to rock music?” Castiel attempted. 

Tracy’s face brightened a notch. “Oh. Cool!”

Castied hummed in acknowledgement, feeling a vague twinge of disappointment. He wasn’t sure why he was so curious to know more, but especially after realizing that no one else had any information about him either, the enigma thickened.

“We should invite him over for game night sometime,” Tracy said cheerily.

Castiel internally winced. The last time he’d been over for a game night, it had ended up with him trying to keep Tracy, Stacy, and the neighbour two floors up from moving all the furniture to clear the centre of the room to have a wrestling match.

It rained on Wednesday. Castiel forgot to bring an umbrella and he ran the whole two blocks home, hair dripping water all over his face and soaking into the back of his collar.

He paused by the side of his apartment building and placed a hand on the brick wall, panting slightly as he caught his breath.

Suddenly, a shadow passed over him, and the drip-drip-dripping of rain from the overhang onto his head halted. Castiel glanced up to see that someone was holding an umbrella above his head. 

“Thank you,” he said, surprised that someone would stop for him.

“No problem,” came the reply, and Castiel looked up to see a tuft of dirty blond hair and the greenest eyes he’d ever seen. He was wearing a black-and-grey plaid.

“Uh,” the stranger said after a pause. “So, do you live here?”

Castiel blinked. His tongue felt oddly thick in his mouth. He unclicked his jaw. “Um—yes. I’m on the seventh floor. 7D.” He paused, swallowed. “I’m Castiel. Novak.” 

“Well hey there,” the man said easily. “Dean Winchester, at your service.” With his shoulder, he gently bumped Castiel and nudged him towards the entrance to the building, and they began to walk together. “I’m 7C, right next to you. Moved in last Friday.”

“Oh,” escaped Castiel before he could stop it. So this was the sought-after new neighbour. Tracy would have a field day if she found out that Castiel got to speak to him before she did.

Dean was taller than Castiel, and as they entered the shelter of the building, he lowered the umbrella, gave it a shake, and began to collapse it. He swung it around and around his wrist as they waited for the elevator, but didn’t make a move to step away from the earlier proximity from when they were sharing the umbrella. Castiel felt oddly awkward, his movements stilted and self-conscious. Dean seemed much more relaxed, broad shoulders rolled back and absentmindedly wiping his feet on the welcome mat. Every once in a while, he’d sneak a look towards Castiel, one that Castiel would notice and returned occasionally. Their eyes met; flitted away. Dean hummed a little tune under his breath and Castiel recognized it as one of the songs he played on long late nights, bleeding through the walls.

They made easy conversation on the ride up. Dean was a mechanic, turns out. He had a brother named Sam.

Once they parted ways towards their respective apartments, Castiel couldn’t help but give a glance at Dean’s wrist.

It was covered with a sleek leather cuff.

Since then, Castiel seemed to see Dean everywhere. 

When he stepped out the door, he was suddenly there—waiting in the elevator lobby with a lopsided grin and a quiet good morning. When Castiel was somehow dragged and guilt tripped into another games night, Dean was right next to him, dealing cards and exchanging trash talk with an ease Castiel had yet to gain after several years of knowing the others. He was wicked good at poker, and turns out, after an outing to the local bar, even better at pool.

Castiel never knew how to play pool. Dean tried to teach him, coming in close from behind, chest flush against back, curling an arm around Castiel’s waist and resting his chin lightly on his shoulder, his breath tickling the strands of Castiel’s hair. His fingers were calloused from years of work, but they wrapped around the pool cue with a grace that was nearly sensual.

That night, they walked home together, hours after everyone else had left—the sky speckled with stars and cigarette smoke. Dean’s voice was rough with whiskey like the gravel that crunched beneath Castiel’s feet.

No, Castiel told himself, when he felt the familiar stirrings in his chest. He brought up the sight of Dean’s covered wrists, his own blank one in return. Dean was not his soulmate, and Castiel was not his. They couldn’t.

No, Castiel told himself, and _No_ was what he told Dean when he tried to kiss Castiel in the stairwell one night, because the elevator was out of service, both of them panting and out of breath, giggling about a stupid joke Dean had cracked on the fourth floor all the way up to the seventh, stumbling up onto the last step with exchanged grins and bright eyes, Dean’s smile suddenly dimming into something firmer and more determined as he stepped closer, crowding Castiel against the cold metal of the door.

Dean, dark-eyed in a way that made Castiel’s breath hitch, stilled.

“Why not?” he murmured. 

“I—” Castiel said, and stopped, distracted by the way Dean licked his lips. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” Dean repeated, lower.

Castiel closed his eyes and searched desperately for the iron-clad willpower that was suddenly nowhere to be found. “My—my soulmark,” he said.

“What about it?”

Instead of answering, Castiel reached for his watch, feeling each tick reverb in his bones as he unclasped it and let it fall to the floor, exposing his wrist, blank and white as a sheet of freshly-fallen snow.

“My soulmate is—” His throat closed off. “I don’t have one anymore,” he retried.

Dean stared at his wrist for a while, his expression unreadable. Then, slowly, like molasses and honey, he reached up to unbuckle his own leather cuffs.

He turned the inside of his wrist towards Castiel. A single, black 0 glared back like the pounding of a gavel.

Castiel needed a moment to register it, and then he jerked back with a gasp and a glance at Dean’s eyes—which were trained on Castiel’s, steady and deep. 

“You’ve already met them?” Castiel whispered.

“Her name was Lisa,” Dean said. “I met her in high school. She got into a car crash the summer of senior year. Amnesia, coma, the whole nine. Woke up a new person, and she didn’t recognize me anymore. Didn’t love me the way she used to.”

Dean traced a finger around the printing on his wrist (so small it was barely there at all). 

“You’re the first person I’ve felt this way with since then,” he said. “Shouldn't that mean anything at all?”

“Dean,” Castiel murmured, feeling his muscles ache with the urge to touch him, to comfort him, to draw him into his arms. He can’t, the dark thing inside him whispered, he wasn’t his soulmate.

But why did he have to be?

Another look at the shimmering green depth in Dean’s eyes, the way the tips of his fingers trembled just the slightest, and Castiel crumbled. He reached around and pulled Dean into a tight hold, one that Dean returned immediately, clutching with a near-desperation.

“Tell me to stop,” Dean said, his hands caressing Castiel’s shoulder blades as if they were wings. “Tell me to stop, tell me you don’t want this, and I’ll stop, I swear.”

Castiel could feel Dean’s heartbeat against his own chest, ratcheting like pachinko balls. He took a deep breath and felt Dean give with him, their bodies melding together and moving as one.

“Don’t stop,” Castiel whispered, low in Dean’s ear, close and muttered like a secret, a sin. 

Dean’s slow exhale set goosebumps down the nape of Castiel’s neck. “I got you, Cas,” he said. “I got you. I promise.”

As expected, Tracy and Stacy had a field day when they found out that not only did Castiel get Dean to reveal what was underneath his cuffs, he was also, as per their words, _cuffed_ —in a different way.

Castiel expanded his shop’s collection of wrist accessories to sell wrist cuffs; braided, leather, studded, striped. He had a couple come in one sunny Thursday morning holding hands with both wrists blank.

And when Castiel woke up one morning to find that, where his wrist used to be bare, there was now a tiny black 0—so small you could nearly miss it—Dean’s reaction was to smile sleepily, roll over, and kiss it gently, with a fragile brush of lips like butterfly wings.

**Author's Note:**

> _checks off "Soulmate AU" from list of tropes to write for Destiel_
> 
> I decided to try something a little different this time. I hope you enjoyed it ^^  
> The title is from Pink Floyd's "Time".


End file.
